CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait - This U.S. Army installation is considered paradise by soldiers who have served in the wastelands and battle-scarred cities of Iraq.

One of its mess halls - the military now calls them "dining facilities" - could accommodate two high school football games. It also has such walk-up eateries as Baskin Robbins, Pizza Inn, Subway and Burger King, along with a well-stocked PX and an air-conditioned tent theater that shows movies and other programs around the clock.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have enjoyed these amenities, but for several months, more than a few of them also enjoyed a nightspot some Alabamians set up that was formally known as the Sand Lizard Saloon.

It served no alcoholic beverages, because alcohol is not allowed at Arifjan. But it was special to its patrons, many of whom prefer to remember it as the Lizard Lounge.

Today, the open air lounge is no more, but much of it remains intact.

Lounge chairs still await occupants on its wooden plank floor. Strands of red white and blue lights still come on at night under a canopy of camouflage netting. The Alabama state flag, the Stars and Stripes and a POW-MIA banner still fly from a flag pole alongside the lounge site.

Hanging from that pole on a chain are wooden planks bearing the names of various northeastern Alabama towns and communities such as Alexandria, Eastaboga and Pell City and their distance in miles from Kuwait.

The club site is quiet today, but at one point it was so popular that the camp commanders put a curfew on it.

"The Alabama rednecks got too wild," said Randy Hughes, an Anniston Army Depot worker now repairing vehicle engines at Arifjan.

You mean it got too ...

"Rowdy?" said First Lt. Elisha Corliss, an Army reservist from San Antonio who frequented the lounge. "Yes."

The establishment was in large part the brainchild of Larry Summers, an Anniston Army Depot refrigeration specialist who recently finished a six-month tour of air conditioning and refrigeration work at Arifjan.

Summers also is guitar picker and singer, as is another of his fellow Depot expatriates, Jody Owens. Not long after their arrival, Summers and Owens started having informal picking and singing sessions, and then they and some friends found a spot where more folks could join them.

Thus the Lizard Lounge was born. At its high-water mark, the lounge had a wooden bar, built by Summers, with a large, built-in Styrofoam cooler that held sodas and nonalcoholic "near-beers" such as Bavarian and Three Horse. The beverages usually were contributed by the entrepreneurs and their good-time minded customers, and any tips and cash donations usually went to buy more.

The nightspot was a hit from the start, but it also was bothersome to sleep-focused residents of the tent community that surrounded it.

"The second night we were open, we got a little rowdy," said James Haggart, an employee of the Army's Warren, Mich.-based Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command. "And the sergeant major told us if we ever did it again, he would move us three miles past hell."

Tent dwellers complain:

Some nights, as many as 100 folks would be hanging out at the lounge, and its closing hours seemed to get later and later. When the closing time started hitting 1 a.m. or later, complaints from tent dwellers escalated, and the camp told the lounge lizards to start shutting down at 10 p.m.

Now that the lounge has shut down permanently and Summers has taken his signature-filled pieces of the bar home with him, there seems to be little chance that the nightspot will ever be reborn. But it lasted long enough to become part of the memories many folks will have of their time at Arifjan.

And many might agree with the assessment of Dewayne Leverett, an employee of the Red River, Texas, Army Depot, when he was asked about the lounge: